Dope Thief
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There's a lot of high-stakes crime series out there, but Dope Thief stands out. It stars Brian Tyree Henry as a man running a risky con, robbing small-time drug dealers by posing as a DEA agent. His luck runs out, however, when he and his buddy in crime mess with the wrong house. I'm Ayesha Harris, and today we're talking about the Apple TV Plus series Dope Thief on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. ♪

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Joining me today is entertainment journalist Christina Escobar. She's the co-founder and editor-in-chief of LatinaMedia.co. Welcome back, Christina. Thanks for having me, Aisha. It's great to have you. Also with us is writer Chris Klemek. Hey, Chris. Welcome back to you, too. Hey, Aisha. Just trying to take my cut from the chaos. Glad to be with you. Yes, it is that kind of show, and it's quite a ride, actually. So, let's get started.

So in Dope Thief, Brian Tyree Henry plays Ray, a scrappy hustler who robs drug dealers in Philly by pretending to be a DEA agent making a bust. His longtime best friend and partner in crime is the morally conflicted Manny. He's played by Wagner Mora. We made it out, man. Just keep going. I'm getting too good at this, man. You almost convinced me we're real DEA. Real DEA with a shot back here, man. Let's count that money.

Now, the grift is working pretty okay until they get a tip about a big-ticket drug lab outside of the city. This attempted robbery goes awry, leads to multiple deaths, and attracts the attention of both the feds and the mysterious overlord of a huge narcotics ring. Ray and Manny escape, but now they have huge targets on their backs, and they and their families have to suffer the consequences. Dope Thief is streaming now on Apple TV+.

Christina, I'm going to start with you. I think actually before we started taping, you know, the three of us were talking. We're all a little skeptical. We're like, I don't know about this. What are we doing here? But tell me how you landed. Yeah, so I definitely went in skeptical. You know, whenever you see gritty crime dramas starring people of color written and created by white guys, I'm always like, ooh, there are so many pitfalls, right? So many places where it could go awry. But I thought,

dope thief delivered. You know, Brian Tyree Henry is also credited on some of the behind-the-camera stuff, and I felt like his character's relationship, Ray and Manny, really worked, and that the action suspense, romance,

part of it just like traveled through. Like there is a lot of darkness in the show for sure. But honestly, the first few episodes felt almost like giddy with adventure and excitement and their friendship. And I felt like that mix of tone made for an exciting show. Yeah. And the showrunner is Peter Craig, who has written for movies like The Town, The Batman, and

And what you're saying about the tone, dark for sure, but also very funny, surprisingly. It's juggling a lot of different moods and tones here. Chris, how did this strike you? Yeah, I was sort of expecting a crime drama, not having read the 2009 novel on which this is based. I was surprised to see the comedy kind of bubble up more profitably than the action-based.

adventure genre elements. Although I do appreciate that when we do get little bursts of action here, it is very human scale. There is a foot chase near the end of, I think the second episode where Brian Tyree Henry is being pursued by a biker and

And, you know, they're running at kind of like a realistic pace. They're both out of breath. And Brian has to jump over some fences in the backyard. And, you know, it's not like a parkour scene from a Marvel movie or something. He's falling down. And which I appreciated those elements. I feel like like everything here is.

is very grounded, you know, not just the action stuff, but the comedy as well. Like it's not a quip that's layered on top of a scene. It's always something that emerges naturally from what's happening from the relationships in the scene. So I was really happily surprised by this. Yeah. I think that point about the humor being sort of baked into this is so crucial because there is a world and, you know, I think we've been seeing a little bit these kinds of –

approaches to serious material where I think people have been getting the memo like, dude, we don't want everything to be as heavy as like the Dark Knight. Like we need some levity here and there. But oftentimes I've noticed that when it comes, it is sort of more like very sassy talk or just like offhanded remarks that they're fun, but

But it feels stagey in a way. And what I love about this is Brian Tyree Henry, you know, he has been great in comedies. He's been great in dark comedies. Obviously, he was Paperboy in the TV show Atlanta, which is, I would say, a dark comedy. Here, he gets to play the lead. And seeing him play the lead as both an action hero seems not right. Action anti-hero? Yeah.

Protagonist, for sure. Protagonist, sure. I think what's so good about this is that Brian Tyree Henry has such a natural presence both when it comes to the dramatic chops and the comedy. There's a running gag that sort of like ends with a meatloaf joke about meatloaf. But like, it's not a joke about meatloaf. It's about his character's relationship to that song in a way. Let me get this straight, Ray. Your ringtone is Bat Out of Hell by Meatloaf. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. It's been driving me f***ing insane. And it lands at the very end of the episode and it works because it's like he's crying, but he's also laughing. It just handles all that really well. So it's really nice to see that. I think on top of it, it's not just though the comedy and the gritty crime. There's also some like, I don't

of want to say like supernatural elements but there's a lot of like flashbacks or moments where his character Ray has to like we don't necessarily know if he's all there how did those elements work for you in terms of just like taking us not just into the comedy in the darkness but also just like the surreality of it all I

I thought they worked. I felt like it gave a human element. You understood that they were more, all of the characters were dealing with more than just what was like immediately in front of them, right? So maybe they were flashbacks, maybe they were dreams, maybe that was like them tuning out for a second and being pulled back into a memory. But I thought it gave them each sort of like a humanity that carried us through. And I want to just also say like,

Brian Tyree Henry carries this show. Like his performance is stellar and his ability to like toggle between those different modes. Like if you had a lesser actor, this show would have fallen apart instantly. And he like holds it together as a main character, as a person who's struggling, as someone with humor, as someone with a backstory. Like he's able to kind of

all of these elements on his shoulder as he's also managing like a really complex crime syndicate murder mystery situation.

Which is no small task. And he does it. He kills it. Yeah. I mean, I'd say mismanaging the murder crime syndicate part. But it's OK. Yeah. I mean, yeah, no, I have loved him in everything. This will sound like a backhanded compliment. But hey, I sometimes I look at Brian Tyree Henry and I'm like, you know, if you have eyes like that, do you even need to be a good actor? He just has the most expressive eyes.

eyes where you can sort of project anything that you're feeling onto him. And he gets to play every conceivable emotion in the show, which is really great for him, right? So I interpreted those black and white little interstitial things as flashbacks, as our indication that even as the show opens, he's dealing with some

And I thought those elements were handled really well. There's a different device in the episode where Brian Tyree Henry's character, Ray, expects to be killed. Like he has resigned himself to his fate and he is rescued by the timely arrival of some cops. As happens. Sure. Yeah.

He thanks God. Yeah, it's luck. Yeah, I mean, well, but I mean, that's one of the inversions of this show, right? Is we don't ever expect law enforcement to be doing anything helpful, right? And in this one case, they do. But when the cops arrive, we cut to like body cam footage of them tackling some of these bikers. And I was a little more thrown by that than by the flashback stuff. I was like, what are we saying here? I mean, we're used to seeing this footage in the context of police abuses. And there's so much...

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah, I mean, anytime you have a show like this, I think it's going to bring up these questions around like, how are we depicting the police? And like, as we've already mentioned, the feds get involved pretty early on. One of the main characters is played by Marin Ireland. She plays Mina Campbell, who in the first episode, she is in the house that Manny and Ray break into and he doesn't realize. And obviously he's posing as a DEA agent. She's like, like, hell you are, you're, you know. And then of course, like,

her being in that house, getting shot, and then, like, recovering, that is her both, like, being like, this is a vengeful story, but also, like, I need to find out, like, what happened to my partner who was in there with her. And so we're tracking not just Ray and Manny and their sort of

conundrums. Manny more so has, he is the morally conflicted one of the two of them in ways that like Ray is not. But then we're also tracking the feds and we are to some extent on Mina's side. And so like, what do you do with that? I don't know. I think that the show kind of walks that balance. And I wouldn't say that the feds and the cops are necessarily the heroes.

there's shades of both them doing good and doing not good. But also Mina is just such a fascinating character. Like the way Ireland plays her. And again, this is where the humor comes in because like she's been shot to the point where like she can barely speak. And so the rest of the show she's speaking, her voice has been impacted by that. And there are jokes about it, not in like a, you know, we're going to make fun of a disabled person sort of way, but in a just like, she's just like,

It's happened to her and she's like pissed. And the way that she interacts with other people, I think, informs both her character and also what has happened to her. Christina, I'm curious what your thoughts are on this, though. I thought the show did a couple of interesting things, right? Like nobody is all the way good or all the way bad in the show. That helps a lot. Another thing I would say is that

While there is a lot of violence. So much. So much violence. And some of it like super gruesome. Like when the guy gets smashed by the car and the wall. Oh, God. Yes. It's rough. Yeah. That foot chase again. Yeah. Yeah. I thought you were going to mention it. That was like very brutal. It gives you a clear hint what show you're in.

But the violence does not correlate to transgression. So it doesn't feel like characters are getting punished in my mind. Yeah. Or like I wasn't totally sure. And I felt like that was a smart choice in terms of

how they positioned and used the violence and the sort of judgment or non-judgment of the characters where everybody is allowed to mess up, do stupid things, do smart things, and still be sympathetic because as much as you're rooting for Mina, you're also like clearly rooting for Ray. Like you're rooting for Ray and you're rooting for Manny who are...

in many ways, victims of this particular situation that they find themselves in. But then also, it's also clear that they're victims of a larger societal situation where they didn't grow up with having good choices as even options, right? So I thought the show handled it surprisingly well. I was waiting for them to really veer in one direction, and they didn't, to their credit. Yeah, I find myself thinking about things as I'm watching this is like, do we empathize more with...

super smart criminals or kind of dumb fumbling criminals in this genre. But I've decided that mix is a strength of the way that we see Ray do smart things and dumb things both. Right. And there's also like a sense that he's doing it in part out of desperation. It's interesting to see Kate Mulgrew, who plays Teresa, who is Ray's

You need money?

I can't pay anybody like that. Hey, what'd I work so hard for? You just said how much you need. I need 10 grand. The hell you need 10 grand for? I don't expect you to have that kind of money. No, no, no. It's, you know, it's, uh... How are you painting so many houses in this cold?

At the same time, we see that his relationship with his father is very complicated. Like, he acts from different impulses in a way that I think, again, there's that mix. It's like, it's not just all because of his circumstances of, like, financial situations. Also, like...

I really have issues with my father. Like, I hate my father. Like, it's your fault. Like, all of these things. I also just think this benefits from having such a strong ensemble cast. Like, Mulgrew is great. Bing Rames is great. We've already mentioned Marin Ireland. You also have Dustin Nguyen, who's playing Son, who is like...

Kind of Ray's mentor. I don't know if mentor is the right word, but he's more deep into the crime syndicate than Ray is. Ray's just like a low level and like they work together and he's great. Like it's just so complicated and it's sprawling in many ways. I want to shout out Kate Mulgrew because I think just whenever she gets to like sink her teeth into a meaty, complicated role, she does great.

So phenomenally. And as someone who watched, say, her as a Starfleet captain growing up, I love seeing her like edgy. I don't want to give away the spoiler about what her life was before, but like, man, she just delivers on this role. And it's clearly also having fun with it in a way that is just like really joyous to watch in a show that, again, has a lot of darkness. Her and that dog. Yeah, man, that dog. I'm so...

The dog was hilarious also. Shermie. I felt like the show actually kept it pretty tight. Like, yes, it is eight hours, but the cast of characters is small enough that you could imagine like a theater version, right? Like they keep it pretty small. And I would also say I was a little bit confused.

surprised i think in the second episode how quickly we got to uh violence chase scenes like i thought it was going to build more slowly all of the stuff that was in there was the good parts you know the fun action sexy whatever stuff and i think that's also the other reason why it worked was because it did manage to keep it so tight across those eight episodes

Yeah. Christina, you said Ray carries this, but I also think Ray and Manny together, the Vagnamora character, like I wanted all that time spent kind of getting to understand their dynamic in a relationship and always wondering, like, are they ever going to betray each other? Like, I think that's like at the heart. Like, that's one of the main questions that comes up. And, you know, what is family? How does Ray, who does he think of his family? And yeah.

I don't know. It just really worked for me. I was along for the ride, and I think it's a pretty good time. And it sounds like we all agree that it's definitely worth checking out, especially if you are team Brian Tyree Henry. It's so great to see him in a leading role. I want more of that, please. More, more, more. Yeah. Yeah.

And when you check out Dope Thief, let us know what you think. Find us at facebook.com slash pchh. That brings us to the end of our show. Christina Escobar, Chris Klemek, thanks so much for being here. This was fun. It was. Thank you. Thank you. And just a reminder, signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is a great way to support our show and public radio.

And you get to listen to all of our episodes sponsor free. So please go find out more at plus.npr.org slash happy hour or visit the link in our show notes. This episode was produced by Mike Katziff and Hafsa Fatima and edited by Jessica Reedy. Hello, Come In provides our theme music. Thanks so much for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Ayesha Harris, and we'll see you all tomorrow.

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